A New York Times Cyber Wish

The New York Times has a wish on its front page today for some kind of retaliation for cyber attacks on the Democratic Party - with the dreamland hope that the Russians were actually trying to influence the United States national elections.  This is made more palatable by the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.  Nobody cared when they hacked the Republicans, but the Times is declaring a national emergency for the attacks on Hillary, sufficient to justify the retaliatory strike of one government on another.  This is all well-written, front page hogwash.

First, the Democratic and Republican parties were hacked the first time Obama ran.  I wrote about the Chinese attacks in my first book, five years ago.  This is nothing new.  The political parties could have hired good security companies to keep people out of their networks, but chose instead to get some people they trusted to do the job, i.e somebody with political trustworthiness, not technical ability.  On that count, they get what they deserve.

On the second count, it is not just the Russians who are doing this hacking, but the Russians have been singled out.  I remind you that the Russians were accused of hacking the State Department, something that is still not over because State did not, and would not, correct what caused the hacking to begin with.  State has no secrets from the Russians.  Donald Trump may have known that when he asked the Russians to see if they could find the other 30,000 emails that Hillary Clinton destroyed.  They probably have them.  But so do the Chinese, maybe the Iranians, the French, and anybody with cyberspies of a decent caliber.  Given the kind of security the parties have, it is no wonder that half the world can hack them.

The Times has not wished for retaliation against the Chinese for all the hacking they have done, and they probably hacked the same politicos that the Russians are accused of.  It is only politics that causes them to have this deep national security concern now that the Democrats have been hacked.  For the lack of retaliation in the past, we have a weak foreign policy to blame.  The National Security Council and the Office of the President are not retaliating for anything for the same reason the Democrats are not calling for it themselves.  The data that has been stolen concerns many of those same people that have to make the decisions to strike back.  They know what will happen if they do.